In the summer of 1995, Croatia waged a lightning military campaign in which it took back most of the territory earlier captured by the Serbs.
It resulted in a mass exodus of about 200,000 Serbs from their self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina.
Columns of Croatian Serb refugees flooded into Serbia, further straining the already over-stretched economy.
Croatia's victory in Krajina was followed by a successful offensive against Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia, and three weeks of Nato bombing. Together these forced Milosevic to the bargaining table to sign the Dayton peace agreement to end the war in Bosnia.
In doing so, he tried to turn his image in the West from Balkan butcher into Balkan peacemaker. He abandoned Serb claims for a Greater Serbia, and was rewarded with a partial lifting of the international sanctions that had crippled the Serbian economy since 1991.
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